Reaction to the Holocaust
Heroes Remember
Reaction to the Holocaust
We didn’t know about it. We only read the English papers, which
were obviously very rigidly censored and in Italy, we only read
the Maple Leaf, which was an army newspaper. The wire, there
was no TV. The wireless was rigidly censored. I had no concept
about the things that I know now because I’ve read history. But
there was leakages and people sort of became aware that
something terrible was happening. We didn’t’ know that in the
army. We knew that Hitler was terrible and the he was trying to
kill the Jews. We didn’t know there were concentration camps or
what he was doing. We didn’t know that he had killed two
million gypsies. I mean, we didn’t know any of those things. I
gradually found that out while I was in the hospital because it
started to leak into the newspapers. My reaction was like what
any human being’s reaction was absolutely abhorrent. I wasn’t
as personally emotionally involved as most of my fellow Jews
because my family is a little unusual. We came over, part of us
in 1852, the rest in 1872. So I’m a fifth generation
Montrealer. Any connections with my original family, which was
in Lithuania, was long since gone. I’m sure I still had family
there and I’m sure that they were killed, but I didn’t even know
of their existence so it wasn’t personal for me. But as a Jew,
knowing that he was trying to kill every Jew, my reactions were
pretty obvious. I was delighted that I had contributed to
getting rid of him. And he didn’t do it alone.
There were lots of people with him.
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